Fast-Food Workers Demand $15 An Hour

MARA LEE maralee@courant.com

Would you pay more at Wendy's so fast-food workers could earn more?

HARTFORD — Before 13 fast-food workers from Connecticut and Rhode Island sat in the road and before the police escorted them to a prisoner van, about 150 supporters marched down Park Street in Hartford, chanting and drumming about the "Fight for 15."

Some were carrying signs: "We're worth more" and, in both English and Spanish: "A fight for $15 and a union."

Kathy Mundo, who was watching from a bus stop, had never heard of the Fight for 15 movement, though this is the seventh demonstration since the push for higher wages and unionization began in New York two years ago.

Mundo, who earns less than $9 an hour at a supermarket where she has worked for two years, said that of course she supports higher wages. But could they get $15? "The way the economy looks, not really."

Dozens of the protesters crowded into a McDonald's just off Park Street at about 11:30 a.m. with a bullhorn, first chanting, then listening to fast-food workers who have become activists.

"I can't tell you how many times I've had to work off the clock," Jelani Burrell, 24, of Bloomfield told the crowd. He said while it only takes a few minutes to take out the trash or put something in the sink, that time adds up.

He told them that he was fired from his part-time delivery job at Papa John's in Bloomfield when his boss found out he was going to these demonstrations, and that SEIU and the National Labor Relations Board helped him get his job back. The crowd cheered its approval.

He is paid $8.70 an hour, the minimum wage, but with tips and a portion of delivery fees, he earns $11.50 hourly on average. He has to pay for his own gas.

The Service Employees International Union has spent more than $10 million on this national push, according to The New York Times. There were at least as many SEIU members — primarily home health care aides, who earn $12.75 an hour — as there were fast-food workers at the Hartford protest.

Burrell, who works a second job at UPS and is a college student, was one of those arrested. He said they were charged with disturbing the peace and given a summons to go to court on Tuesday. Police gave the fast-food workers the chance to clear the street and avoid being arrested, but they remained.

Katelin Smith, a Dunkin' Donuts worker in Hartford, stopped to take pictures and gawk at the protest and blocked traffic. Smith, 22, of Middletown, has worked at several Dunkin' Donuts over the last six years but had never heard of the fast-food workers' strikes. She was conflicted about the goals of the movement. It's hard to keep up when it gets busy, and she thinks they deserve better pay, said Smith, a part-time college student who lives with her parents. And, she added, her co-workers who have their own apartments find it hard to pay rent.

But, she added: "Minimum wage is going up anyway. It doesn't make sense." She said she would never join such a protest. "I can't be out here just screaming," she said.

John Gordon, a restaurant analyst who works in California and advises both national chains and franchisees, said few hourly fast-food workers stay for even one year in the same place, which is a huge barrier to organizing a workforce into a union.

"I believe the unionization threat is near zero and I very strongly believe that," he said. But he said the protests are a way to apply pressure to politicians to raise the minimum wage around the country.

Rep. Edwin Vargas, D-Hartford, also spoke to the crowd in the restaurant. "It's corporate policy that has kept the worker down," he said, as protesters responded: "That's right."

"You cannot be a giant vacuum cleaner, taking every dollar out of our community," he said.

In an interview outside, he said, "I think most consumers would gladly pay an extra 10 or 15 cents."

About half the fast-food workers at the protest work at Wendy's.

Gordon said the average customer's bill at Wendy's is $7. A Wendy's purchase will have to increase by 15 cents each year over the next three years for a restaurant to pay Connecticut's scheduled $10.10 minimum wage and still preserve the typical $80,000 in annual profits per location, Gordon said.

But $15 is impractical, Gordon said. If a Wendy's franchise paid hourly workers $15 an hour, the customer's average bill would climb to $8, because labor costs are only a portion of a restaurant's expenses. But in poor neighborhoods, he said, it's not clear that customers would pay that. They might buy fewer drinks or items, or come in less often.

Heather Sirbrian, a customer who was eating at McDonald's when the protesters arrived, said she had heard of the movement before and doesn't support it.

"Fifteen dollars for a worker at McDonald's is ridiculous," said Sirbrian, who lives in East Hartford and works as a line cook at a sit-down burger restaurant. After working 20 years in restaurants, she said, "I don't even make $15 an hour!" She makes $12.50.